The root of all evil

Just finished my finals a few days back. I didn't really do as well as I had planned to do in my exams. The reason as to what inhibited me from preparing thoroughly in my exams is too personal to share. It would be quite an amusing read, I suppose, if someone considered reading my answers line by line. Fortunately, I am certain that such a thing will not happen. Our world is not the kind as described in the great books. Not one bit. In every book that I read, there was an element of inspection, cross examination and carefulness within it. Books instil a sense of order and security within us, they make us believe and hope that rationality exists in this world. That is because most of the great books discuss how the world ought to be, not how the world is. But, what is it that keeps humanity, which exalts these books, from converting this biblo-utopia into reality?  You might say, the evil in the society ofcourse. Quite right, but, what is evil really? evil is something essentially, that tends to stop a person from exercising his freedoms. And, why is this deemed evil? Because, of the simple fact that it curtails an individual's freedom. I think that you agree with me so far. Now, I ask you, what is the root of all evil ? I shall try to answer this in this post.

If you'd have seen the academic calendar prescribed by my University, you'd have noticed that there are so many terms , conditions , clauses , rules and other regulations that it would make any person feel as if the institution is glorious. You would say to yourself; I know I did when I first joined, "Just look at all these things ... wow ... engineering is so ... organized ... absolutely every aspect of it is looked into ... the people who designed the curriculum are really smart ... If I keep to my best, then definitely I ll get the marks I deserve ...". Except that, I aced at C language in my lab sessions, I could solve any problem given to me, however, in the finals, I got a measly 70% marks. Why? Well, most probably, because the examiner did not have a clue as to how my programs worked, i.e the logic behind by program.
Don't you hate it when the person with whom you wish to communicate, just does not "get it"? I remember, a similar sort of thing happened to me during my lab exams. In the lab exams , we were to first write down the program on a sheet of paper. A lecturer would then scrutinize the solution and then I would be allowed to type out the source code on the computer and execute it and show that my code works. I had this one madam; when she saw my solution she declared, "how will this code work? it will not work...". I said, "mam, let me explain..."; but she just would not listen and would stick to her claims saying, "no this cannot work" ... I wasted approximately 45 minutes, in vain, trying to convince her. Apparently, she was not convinced because the program which I wrote was not the same as the program which was in my records. Fortunately my C language lecturer happened to drop by. He vouched for me and I was allowed to execute the code and show the output to the madam. It took me probably 5 minutes to type and run the code. I showed the output to her. She was surprised when my code actually worked, she was so cocksure that my code would not work, she was searching if I had manipulated the program so as to generate the desired output. She did not find any manipulations. To this day I don't know, why that madam could not accept my solution, I admit my source code that time was obfuscated. I had only started to learn computer science. But why was it so hard to accept that, even if the code is confusing, it can get the job done. My code was infact, probably, having the least space complexity. Why was is it so hard to accept a newer, a little different way of doing the same thing? What I encountered here was probably my first genuine exposure to the classic case of "willful ignorance" - Ignorance and closed mindedness because of something in the other persons mind. The most irrational and frustrating thing in the world, and also the most damaging thing to the spirit of its victim.

I always thought that every human had a certain amount of intellect, so that he could be reached out to. In other words, I thought that every person in the world was to a certain minimum extent a rational person. The most important and defining factor of a progressive individual and a progressive race undoubtedly is the ability to rationalize every individual experience or event and treat each one of them as different and then decide the course of action, instead of making gross generalizations and act based on prejudices. But here or perhaps anywhere else in the world also, there are people, who are merely "trained", like machines, to undertake and perform tasks. Instead of instilling the ability to think, the person is paid to just do. The thinking part.... well its not for us to do. You are not supposed to think ... you are only supposed to "do" what someone else tells you. This is how order is maintained ... I read about this principle in Management Science course at the university. The father of "scientific management", Winslow Taylor's principle of scientific management would say that let the managers only think. The workers need not think and give any inputs. The workers only need to work. Thank God the people soon realized that it was a stupid thing to implement. But inspite of all the improvements, the majority of the people do not understand that leaving the thinking to others and overriding our personal thoughts is dangerous. They infact sometime support this notion and euphemistically put it as, " its for the best". Its not that they don't know what they are doing. Its that they choose to ignore it willingly - "Willful ignorance".
So, what is my point? My point is that people today are afraid or simply too lazy to think. I personally think that it is mostly fear that stops them from thinking. Need concrete examples: Just look at the religious fundamentalists. Fundamentalist christians believe that if one does not believe in Jesus Christ(mind you, its not if you accept his teachings, its more important to accept Jesus Christ to be your saviour, his teachings are of secondary importance), they WILL go to hell! ... what do you call that? Here, hell is used as a tool for social manipulation, for emotional manipulation. Lots of children are scared by the notion of hell, the preachers say that you are free to do what you want, the choice is yours; If you wish to be happy you must blindly follow the scriptures without ever questioning them. But, if you question a holy scripture you are committing blasphemy and you WILL go to hell! I m not bashing only christians, other religions are more or less the same. But, religious figureheads would even use force to stop people form thinking and questioning. They did it in the past repeatedly. They persecuted anyone who thought with his head. I am pointing out the Christian persecution because, Europe has been probably the most progressive continent in the last millennium and because we have all read about it and so it is convenient to verify and bring into context, my claims.
When Copernicus dared to propose the heliocentric model,he was burnt alive. Galileo was not allowed to speak his mind. He was blackmailed into apologizing to the church for holding his views. If the king and queen of Spain hadn't supported Magellan, the church would have never allowed him to circum-navigate the earth. Charles Darwin was ridiculed and emotionally blackmailed, he was forced into becoming a social outcast by the church of England, however, because he lived in an enlightened age, the steps taken by the church were greatly dampened, and he did not face the church's wrath. In 2008 The Church of England apologised to Darwin. There are countless examples where men who have tried thought for themselves and urged others to think for themselves are persecuted.

So, why is it that people always are afraid to think? Why can't they break the shackles of fear? Its because of the mentality of humans. The group mentality. We like to go along with a group. We find false sense of security within our group. "Go with the flow" my mom tells me, so does my dad, go with the flow, otherwise your life will be painful. Ah! so thats it! It is the pain! Which is very real, which scares us into being bound to irrationality. Thinking can bring us pain. Because the people who think can sometimes think of unpopular concepts. And when one thinks of unpopular concepts it goes against the "willful ignorance" of the people. And then comes in the torture, abuse and other nasty stuff. You get punished for trying to think for yourself and asking others to think for themselves.

Here in India, Indians think that India is culturally "rich". I m sceptical of this assertion. People around the world think that some of the smartests people are indians. I have heard this lots of times. Try this yourself. Goto www.google.com and type "why are indians ". And see what suggestions you get. These suggestions are based on the previous searches done by people from around the world. Based on these past searches, google tries to guess your query.

Hmm interesting and amusing ... we indians have developed a stereotype for ourselves. Everyone thinks that we are smart people.Thats good except that we are smart only in the sense that we follow orders in the smartest way possible. We dont do the thinking on why a particular thing has to be done. We simply do the thinking how smartly it can be done.

We all seem to get so easily tied up in the rat race of life, that we fail to think , "do we really need to do this in the way we are told to do?". We never ask this. I have seen almost everyone that I know to have a "go with the flow" attitude. You think I m making a gross generalization? Well, then how do you explain hordes of IT professionals and engineers? How many of us willingly took up IT or computer science all on their own, without any advice from anyone? How many of us are truly passionate about our work?
So moving on, how far do you think this will take a country? Well we might live like the kings and queens earning fat pay-cheques, but we still would be the lackeys of the people who originally gave us the order. The progressive thinking of Indian culture has stagnated, probably right after the vedic age. Do you ever wonder why every other major religion has undergone major changes and revisions? Does it make you feel proud that Indian culture has remained virtually unchanged for last 4000 years ? Does it make you feel proud that the largest religion in India, Hinduism has survived, intact for so long? There can be no greater way of deceiving ourselves, than to "go with the flow" on this one without actually thinking critically about this.

Every other major religion has undergone changes. A few men of that religion thought and realized that the teachings were outdated, and so they broke off from the original (they broke off and formed religions whose guidelines and basic principles are the same, but they cast out the prejudices that came with the old version of the religion; examples include: Lutherans, Mormons, Sunnis and many more). They did not believe that they were committing blasphemy by disobeying what "the authority" said, they merely wanted to shun the outdated models of living and progress themselves and live guilt-free. The basic faith-structure never changed, because they still believed in the basic , self-realizational truths of life and society. Hinduism, on the other hand, has not gone through any changes whatsoever. Sure , there have been leaders who tried to change and make the followers progressive, but they only ended up creating "sects" , "samajs" and so forth, most of them are not trusted by the majority of the people. Now why is this happening? The reasons are obvious; The fear of being social outcasts, the fear of humiliation and abuse, the fear loosing public face and probably fear of loosing popularity.

Why do we feel so insecure? Why do we wish to be judged by others? Why is that we need someone to tell us always what to do, what to choose , whom to choose , where to go , what to eat , how to live ..... if we want to take advise, why don't we contemplate and reflect on it, instead of buying it blindly, just because an elder or the society at large has told to do so. We drop the only true weapon, our only source of power and self-respect, our rational mind. We surrender it to someone else's will. No matter who he/she/it might be, our blood relations or an institution, why is it that we want to surrender or why do they demand our surrender ? We name this "respecting our elders" or "respecting the culture". Our mind is our only retreat, it is the only thing that gives us power, and unfortunately, no one, can truly understand what is in our mind and how we feel, no matter how personal or close the person or institution might be in our lives, and therefore it should not run our life for us. A good teacher would simply, try to make things more clear for the student so that he/she use their own intuition and rational mind and ultimately judge themselves and the teacher would then be as a bolster in his/hers endeavour.
Why is that we need someone to tell us... "yes you are doing good and right and correct.". It  gives us only an illusion of security. Why such a need for acceptance? Are we so insecure deep down? Don't we have self-respect? Is the only way to gain self-respect is from the approval of the society at large? What is the rationality here? Why are we fooling ourselves into believing the tripe that our culture is grand, when infact its hypocritical? Self-respect cannot come from outside. Self-respect only comes when we think as an individual. It is when we think and question, our conscious begins to realize that , "I am (or you are) not just a bulk of flesh with a head to follow orders and social laws blindly , but I am (or you are) an individual who can think and analyse and take my (or your) own decision based on my (or your) own rational mind."

The irrational people are not really incapable of thought. They just want things to be the way it has always been. We can fight reason with reason, but how can we fight the non-reason ? The irrational, surely, is like a beast of prey. No matter what we say to try and pacify that beast, it would all be invain, for it does not want to understand. Not that it does not have intelligence. Its as if it were "programmed" to accomplish its motive at all costs. It will think, but only of how to accomplish the "programmed" task, not realizing that it is devouring the spirit of rationality. It is not blind. It can see everything that it is doing, but it is chained by fear, fear of something, which is beyond the comprehension of the voice of reason. A shining example of this: The suicide bombers who are hell bent to carry out their bombing missions. They prefer to drown the voice of reason, and think only about their mission. Can't we think about why we should do this, before actually doing it? We can think, but we do not want to think.

In india, there are many incidences where we see that we do not wish to think rationally. Since the advent of modern secular India, probably, nothing has become more irrelevant and pointless than the caste system. Established ages ago, it still continues to exist. It is believed by Indians that our previous lives determine our caste in the next life. There is no rational explanation of why the caste system should be followed. But here we are. If you read the newspapers, you would have read about "honour killings" of married couples - The killing couples who choose their partners, who are from different castes. Here, we observe the classic example of having the fear of loosing family name. Because the girl married the boy of some other caste, the "family name" is ruined. The logic behind this is probably "couldn't the boy/girl get anyone from his/her own caste to love and marry?". So, inorder to redeem the family honour, the couple is killed. Sounds logical? What exactly is family honour anyways? What will be achieved from gaining such "honour"? Will the rest of the families start paying this family tributes, exalt them? Most probably they might praise them saying, "yes you have done good and right and correct", but they wont even support them in the time of need. Infact, in the time of need, the boy/girl whom they killed, would have definitely come to their aid, but alas, the irrational things like "family name" and "caste pride" is more important than the happiness of their child. Such monstrous mindsets are still prevalent in "modern india", the "IT hub" of the world, the nation which has unity in diversity. The phrase "unity in diversity" does not have any weightage, it never really did. Its just a fancy, flowery phrase, just like the ones I found in the academic calender of my university book, hollow and empty.

So now I ask you again; What is the root of all evil? Is it the institution of organised religion? Is it the institution of caste system? Is it the institution of family values and family pride? Is society at large forcing social norms and customs on the individuals? Is it the institution of the democratic government? Is it the panchayats ? Or is the institution of money itself, the source, because it creates social classes? No, Its none of them. All the institutions that are blamed for the problems in India and the world, and labeled as evil, are lifeless entities. They are nothing but established institutions. Institutions are collaborations among people to help people to do the things that they cannot achieve individually. The reason that they were initially established was to serve the people. They assumed the role of the servant to the individual and the purpose of an institution was supposed to serve the people. But somewhere down the line, the role of the institutions changed. It was given the status of the master of the individual. And when an institution becomes the master of the people, when it starts to tell people what is right and what to do, it begins to encroach on the individuals freedom and that is when evil is born. The institutions themselves or the people operating the institution are not evil themselves, but when an individual submits his rationality to the institution, because of pressure or whatever reason, it becomes evil because it takes away the fundamental aspect of a human being that separates him from an animal or a machine - thinking for himself/herself. When the institution is governing the actions of the individual he is no longer free to think or do. Everything whereupon is decided by the institutions and individualism is lost, the man reduced to nothing more than an unthinking trained living being.
We might think that even in this state, we have freedom, we are able to still do many things, some of you may even deny the notion that we are not free. But do you really think we are free from prejudices propagated by the various established institutions? If we really are, then why are we so against inter-caste marriages? Why are we so weary of the muslims? Why do we find it difficult to mix and mingle with people who come from regions other than your own, mixing with them would be our last resort because there is no one else? Why are we constantly complaining about corruption within the government and not doing anything?

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are, unfortunately, a nation of hypocritical ideology, we say that we are secular, but we are afraid to mix and mingle freely with anyone of a different culture other than our own, but we dont label this as fear, we label this as being conservative. Now tell me which holy religious book tells us not to mix with other people? Conserative view is an euphimisism for fear of changing ourself and adapting ourself.
We say we are free, but we grant freedom only on the surface, and we manipulate others and keep others from taking the unbiased decisions by playing on their emotions. You probably think a million times, "what would society say?" before even stepping out of your house. What is going on here is that you have submitted your freedom to "the society". Sure, the society is important, it is very important, we cannot survive without it. But, the society has no business in deciding what is right for you. The society only has the right to comment. And you should critically analyse the society's comment and see if it is justified in your case or if its an exception. But, we don't. If something might be frowned upon by society, we simply dont do it. We just conform blindly, scared of the society and we label this as being modest and disciplined. Ignoring the fact that true discipline comes from inside, and it cannot be enforced upon by any society.
 This is the truth of our "rich" culture. We educate ourselves, but that education is not education at all, its merely a training to effectively follow what the others tell you. True education would cultivate in you the ability to think for yourself and to decide, without feeling any social pressure, what is right for you- the individual. But, here we have a society where, the less you think, and the better you follow, the quicker you get your biscuit, thrown to you; just like how the master throws food to his dog if his dog has been obedient and faithful to him. Indians have "talent" but do not have a much more important faculty, "the rational mind". But remember this, if we as a nation, truly wish to progress and tap into our human potential, we need to start thinking, growing and nourishing the "individual" within us abandon the "go with the flow" mob mentality. There is no such thing as Plato's Utopia or Shri Ram's Ram raj or Salim Crishti's Jannat or the biblical garden of Eden on earth, but when individuals are allowed to be truly free, its only then that the stagnation of Indian culture and society will be overcome.

There is no greater evil, according to me, than to kill the spirit of another human being, via emotional manipulations or forceful physical oppression, for the sake of preservation of an institution. I deem this evil because institutions were never meant to be masters of people, they were meant to help and serve the people and enforce the individual freedoms, not take them away. And When we begin to understand and realize this fact(it would be really hard, but once we do), the power of the supposedly most powerful institutions would fade and then we will begin to rightfully question the long standing norms. For it is said that:

When the people fear the institutions, there is tyranny; when the institutions fear the people there is liberty. 

What do you want? You decide.

 I shall leave you with the wise words of the Thomas Jefferson to help you:

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith. - Thomas Jefferson

THE END